[00:00:00] Christine: Hey friends. Welcome to a special bonus episode of the milspouse mastermind show. I went live in our Facebook. Earlier this week to give a free training on our identity as military spouses, how do we get clarity on who we are and what we really want in life? And since this was such a last minute training, I decided to share the replay both inside.

[00:00:24] And on the podcast this week, so happy military spouse appreciation day. I hope you get a ton of practical value in this deep dive training into how we get clarity on who we are outside of our role as a military spouse.

[00:01:33] Friday is military spouse appreciation day. And so I really wanted to be able to celebrate and have a way to say, thank you for being a military spouse. What you do is so important and what you go through, there’s a lot of challenges that the average person doesn’t have to deal with. And so I just want to say thank you for what you do.

[00:01:59] Thank you for who you are. And I want to support you in any way that I can. What we’re going to talk about today is really this concept of identity and really figuring out. Who you are, how you get in touch with yourself again, and start to discuss. What you really want. So I sat down the other day and I was like, okay, what are the big areas that really holds military spouses back?

[00:02:28] And you could go all over the board with all the different reasons, but I saw these three broad categories stand out. So I want to talk about just real briefly, these three big categories that end up holding us back from really stepping into our story, into who we’re meant to be.

[00:02:57] The first one is this concept of identity. Who am I? And what do I want? Because when we’re unclear, we don’t move forward and we don’t take action.

The second big bucket is this idea of balance. And it’s really asking the question, how do I balance my dreams and desires with military? So many of us get stuck in this place where we don’t know how to juggle it and how to balance it all. And so we just do nothing or we, we kind of think about it and we stay stuck dreaming and never take action

[00:03:21]. And then the third big bucket is this bucket of overwhelm where I’m trying to do all the things I’m trying to pursue my dreams. I’m trying to manage the household. I’m trying to do everything. And I feel overwhelmed and stressed. And I don’t know what to do about it. So those are three big areas where I see military spouses, get held back. So if you resonate with one of those, I would love for you to share with us which one you most resonate with. But today we’re really going to focus on that first one.

[00:04:10] Identity. Who am I? What do I really want? And so that’s what we’re focusing on today. And here’s the truth that for so many of us as military spouses, we’ve placed our dreams and our passions on the back burner. We found somebody that we want to share our life with, but following them and their career is not easy.

[00:04:34] And it’s so easy to say, okay, Put my own dreams and my passions on the back burner. And when we do that, it’s very easy for us to lose ourselves in the process and our sense of identity.

Now, if you were in this place where you are asking the questions, Hey, what is the best version of myself? What should I be doing?

[00:05:00] What is my purpose? How can I be happy? How can I live a fulfilling life? If those are questions you’re asking, I have great news for you. That means you are already on the right path. You are asking questions and you are trying to understand yourself more. Now it’s absolutely. Okay. If you are not asking these questions, if you were just in that place where you.

[00:05:24] I just feel stuck right now. I don’t really know who I am, what I want. I just know that I’m not happy with the way my life looks today. I’m frustrated by military life. That’s perfectly okay. That’s, that’s a normal place to be. But regardless of which camp you fall in, you are in the right place today. And our goal for this.

[00:05:48] Specific training is to give you specific tactical tools and strategies to help you get in touch with yourself again and get clarity. On who you are and what you really want. Now, I want to lay the groundwork before we get into the training and give you some realistic expectations. I want you to understand that we’re talking about clarity today.

[00:06:17] Clarity isn’t something that’s just going to happen overnight. Listen to the training and then you wake up tomorrow and you know exactly who you are and what you want. It’s not going to happen overnight. I also want to say that there is no magic formula for clarity. I’m going to give you specific exercises and tools and strategies to help you get greater clarity, but there’s no magic formula.

[00:06:46] If you just do this and this then outcomes greater clarity, and you know who you are, there are just ways that we make progress towards gaining greater. And then the third piece that we all have to understand is that I can’t give you that clarity. It’s something that you have to search out for yourself.

[00:07:10] You have to do the work. I’m going to give you exercises that you can do to help yourself, but you are the one that makes the choice to do the work. So at the end of the day, it’s really up to you. All right. If you are new to mil spouse mastermind and you are a recent listener to the show, I’ll just give you a very brief overview of who I am.

[00:07:36] And my story, I obviously am the host of the milspouse mastermind show, a podcast for military spouses, uh, to help us get unstuck and craft a life with. Uh, you can see a picture of my family there on the screen. We are indeed our current duty station. We are stationed in Guam. That’s a picture of my husband and I have three beautiful girls who are seven, five and three, but that’s not where my story started.

[00:08:12] And so I’m going to take you back to my life before I was a military spouse. I was a very career driven person, I had very clear goals and dreams and plans of what my life was going to look like. And I was going to be in control of what I did and how I climbed the career ladder. And then I met my husband and honestly it wasn’t really until I had kids that I realized I couldn’t chase my dreams anymore.

They got more complicated trying to find a job got way more complicated when we started PCSing. Um, but I still found ways to find a purpose. And then I had babies. I had three little girls in just under for years. And I was struggling to find a job.

[00:09:04] I was trying to figure out how to balance it, all the demands of my very young ingrained family with, um, pursuing my own dreams and passions. And I really just realized that I was in this place of feeling stuck and that I didn’t love my life. And I just wasn’t sure what to do about it. So I do what I always do when I want answers.

[00:09:29] And I just dove into all the research and I started reading books and listening to podcasts and blogs and watching webinars, everything I could get my hands on related to. Productivity to goal-setting to finding purpose to personal growth to entrepreneurship. Oh my goodness. I was trying to figure out how do I find a way to do something that lights me up and impacts others that uses my skills and still prioritize the needs of my patients.

[00:10:06] What came out of that whole season was really me starting a blog, which then turned into this podcast, the mil spouse mastermind show, where I can help other military spouses learn to thrive, find purpose in their current season and live a life of greater joy and impact. And this is what we always say here at the milspouse mastermind show.

[00:10:33] And this is what we’re going to dig into. You were made for more, more than the managing of schedules, keeping up with kiddos and holding down the home front, you have something valuable to offer. And when you pursue the things that light your heart on fire, you trade frustrating. For fulfillment and isolation for a life of impact.

[00:10:58] And what I really want to focus on today is this concept that you have something valuable to offer. And let me be clear just for a moment. When I say you are made for more, you have something to offer. Sometimes we get this idea in our head that that means we just need to hustle harder to fit more into our schedule.

[00:11:22] It can make us almost add to the guilt that we feel like we should be doing more. We should figure out how to fit all of this in. And we. Feel burdened by the wheat of that statement. And that is not what I want for you. And I found this quote and I thought this is a great way to explain what I mean when I say you are made for.

[00:11:50] It’s a quote by Erwin McManus. And he says, we know we’ve seen a work of art when a life inspires us to be more, to live more fully and authentically. And that’s what. Being made for more is all about it’s living more fully and authentically because when you live into the best of who you are, your full sense of self, your skills, your experiences, you have something to offer the world.

[00:12:23] And when you live as your most full and authentic, You are able to bless those around you. You are able to make a difference in the lives of others. Andrew, going to find more joy and fulfillment in your daily life. And so that’s really what I want for all of us. So the question that we always ask is, is it possible to find the filament and craft a life of meaning and purpose as a military spouse?

[00:12:54] And the answer is absolutely. Yes. And here’s why this really matters. We need to be able to live this way because we’re going to find fulfillment. But the foundation for all of this is knowing who we are and how we were made. If we don’t know who we are, we cannot live a life of purpose. This is the founding.

[00:13:22] For it all. So let’s begin just by talking about the foundations of what is this concept of identity. And if you go to dictionary.com, they will tell you that the definition is the condition of being oneself, the qualities, beliefs, et cetera, that distinguish or identify a person or thing. The problem is that’s not what we often think about when we think about the term identity.

[00:13:55] If I ask you to describe yourself to a new person, where would you begin? You would begin most likely with how our culture defines identity in relationship with others or in what we do. And this is why. We have so much trouble with identity. Most of the time, our identity is tied up in what we do, who we are in relationship with and others opinions.

[00:14:32] And expectations of us. If I say, who are you? And you say, well, I am a nurse, or I am a stay at home mom, or I am a podcast host. We’re tying our identity to what we do. If you say I’m a mom or I’m a wife or a husband or a son or a daughter, we’re talking about ourself in regards to who we are in relationship.

[00:15:02] But that doesn’t really describe who we are at our core. It just describes aspects of our life. The other problem with identity is that we get so wrapped up in what others think of us or what others expect of us, that we start to lose sight of who we are and what we really want. So the key to us living a life of meaning and purpose comes down to understanding this concept of identity.

[00:15:40] And identity actually starts with a belief about who we are. What do you believe to be true about yourself. I want to talk to you about some of the mantras we have at mil spouse mastermind near our five core things that I hope become beliefs of yours. If you listened to this podcast on a regular basis, number one is that you have something valuable to offer.

[00:16:12] Number two, is that the fulfillment comes from contributing to something outside your. Number three, what you do today matters. Number four, you don’t have to wait for tomorrow to chase your dreams. And number five, we are better together. These are all beliefs that you can choose to either adopt or not adopt.

[00:16:39] And so today we’re really going to focus on this first belief that you have something valuable to offer. Do you believe that to be true? Think about that for a moment. Do you really believe you have something valuable to offer? Because you’re never going to step into your story and into living a life of meaning and purpose.

[00:17:04] If you don’t believe that you have value in this. Of yourself, and it’s not value based on what you do, but it’s value based on who you are. And then out of who you are, comes that ability to live and breathe life into others. I believe that you were born with curiosity, with imagination, creativity, and courage.

[00:17:32] You were designed to dream to risk and to create. But all of that is based on who you are in and of yourself. I love this quote from Parker Palmer, who says, identity depends not on the role that we play, but only on the simple fact that we are children of God valued in and for. Our identity at the very core at the foundation comes based on the fact of who we are.

[00:18:10] We are valued in and for ourselves, we have value. Therefore we can offer value to others. Our value is not based on what we do, our worth. It’s simply on the fact that we were created by a creator, God who values us in and for ourselves. So when we talk about really understanding how to live out of that identity, live out of that belief, that we were created to have value in just the fact that we are human beings and that we have something to offer others.

[00:18:54] Well, we can’t live into that story if we don’t have clarity on who we are. So when we talk about clarity, we talk a lot more about this in milspouse purpose playbook. It’s all about how we live into that story. How we find our unique purpose and really live into that story. But when I talk to people about how you determine what your unique purpose is, it comes down to these three key components.

[00:19:29] And I like to think of it. Three concentric circles, our essence, our intention and our impact. Our essence is the core of who we are, how we were created. Our intentions are who we want to be and how we want to show up in the world. If it’s something that is on your heart, it was put there for a reason and for a purpose.

[00:19:57] And then the third piece of that puzzle is our impact. This is what we really care about. The causes that we care about, the way that we want to impact the world around us. What I love about humanity is that we each have a different set of experiences and passions. And when we live into that, we can breathe life into the world in so many different ways.

[00:20:25] It’s, it’s just amazing to see how many different interests people have. But they all are impacting the world for good. And when we all live into our stories, we really make a difference in the lives of others. But let’s talk for a minute about what happens when we don’t get the clarity that we need.

[00:20:48] Well, that’s when we ended up in this place where we feel lost, confused, stuck, overwhelmed, anxious, even depressed that. The place where we know that we’re frustrated with life and we feel like we don’t love the life that we’re living. We feel overwhelmed. And we just wonder, is there more to life than this?

[00:21:15] But on the flip side, when we get that clarity piece, when we start living into our true identity, that’s where we find joy, purpose fulfillment impacts and yes, even happiness. So the question that we all have to ask ourselves is which kind of life we want to live. Do you want to live in that place of just being frustrated and stuck and not loving life? Where you deal with anxiety? Or do you want to move towards this place of meaning and purpose, enjoy and fulfill?

[00:21:55] I think I know what I, most of us would say there, but the big question then is how do we get there? How do we get on the right path headed in the right direction? We need clarity. So what we’re going to do in today’s training is talk about five specific strategies to help you get more clear on who you are and what you want.

• [00:22:23] Get Curious
• [00:27:28] Discover Joy
• [00:30:04] Uncover Your Values
• [00:34:40] Unpack Your Dreams
• [00:39:17] Take Action

So my question is, what action are you going to take? Are you going to just know that you need to get curious to start observing yourself, how you react to the world around you? What you think about. Just get clear, curious about yourself and the world around you. Are you going to take some time to determine what really lights you up?

[00:41:16] Are you going to clarify your core values? Are you going to spend some time eating easy vision for your future? If it’s the values assessment, don’t forget. You just can get that free worksheet by going to mil spouse mastermind.com forward slash values. I want you to know that that is available to you.

[00:41:43] Maybe the next step for you is to say yes to investing in yourself and getting that full clarity on who you are, what you want and who you are meant to be so that you can fully live into your story and discover. Who you were created to be. And that’s what through the milspouse purpose playbook, which is your step-by-step guide to find purpose, reclaim your life and dreams and discover who you are meant to be.

[00:43:48] You can start getting the clarity you need today so that you start unpacking. Who am I, what do I really want? How do I start crafting a life with purpose? And even if you’re taking tiny baby steps in your current season of life, you are preparing yourself for your next season and for the impact that you’re going to have in the lives of other people in your life.

[00:45:59] No matter where you are, that’s why the milspouse mastermind show exists every week. We will have a new episode to help you thrive to help you get unstuck and to help you craft a life with purpose, make sure you subscribe to the show. So you never miss an episode. You can do. On apple podcasts by going to mil spouse mastermind.com forward slash show.

[00:46:25] And here’s what I want to leave you with today. Your identity matters. You have something valuable to offer the world below. And here’s what I also want you to know. This is one of my favorite quotes from Jessica Honegger. She says the world needs your contribution. Even if that contribution feels awful.

[00:46:49] Small right now, somebody needs use. Somebody needs you to step into your story, to live more fully and authentically as yourself, and to really discover how you were created and who you are meant to be. When we live into these, this story, we are better together and together we impact the world for good.

[00:47:14] You’ve got this. Go out there. Have an amazing week living filled, fueled and full of joy.